Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder is an iconic jazz album. The five musicians who made the album a reality were connected to many jazz greats. In the network graph below you can see their sphere of influence. Billy Higgins, Joe Henderson, Barry Harris and Morgan himself are among the most connected musicians who were personnel on this album.

While only five musicians performed on Morgan’s hard-bop masterpiece, their affiliation with musicians on many others shows the broader social network during their careers. Each “edge” drawn between musicians represents collaboration with an artist on another jazz album.1

Zoom in/out and click the dots!

# visnetwork
library(visNetwork)
nodes<-anetfinal[ , 1];         links<-anetfinal[ , 1:2]
nodes<-nodes%>%group_by(LeadArtist)%>%summarise(n=n())
nodes$id<-nodes$LeadArtist;nodes$label<-nodes$LeadArtist;links$from<-links$LeadArtist;links$to<-links$AssociatedArtist #req'd names
visNetwork(nodes,links, background="darkgray") %>%
        visNodes(color = "yellow")%>%
        visEdges(color=list(color="black", highlight = "orange",width=33),
                    smooth = FALSE, width=12, dashes= TRUE, arrows = 'middle')%>%
        visOptions(highlightNearest = TRUE)

Examining One Album’s Network

Social network analysis (SNA) is a systematic way to examine how individuals are connected to one another. The network maps shown on jazzViz illustrate how rich the relationships were between many jazz musicians on so many classic recordings.

The idea of “centrality” is key in SNA. Who is most connected? Who is a “gatekeeper” – that is, who is a central figure who bridges the gap between different communities of connected musicians? One basic measure of centrality is degree. Degree is a measure of the number of immediate neighbors someone has. Above you see the Lee Morgan has many immediate neighbors in the network. Others have only one.

Another measure is betweenness. Betweenness measures the extent to which a person lies on paths between others. People with high betweenness may have considerable influence within a network by virtue of their control over information passing between others.

The graph below plots these two centrality stats together. The most influential are blue. Mouse-over the dots to see who is who!

g1<-ggplot(df, aes(V1, V2,label=label))+
        geom_point(colour=ifelse(df$V2>50, "blue","black"))+
        scale_x_log10()+        # highly disparate scales!
        geom_label_repel(nudge_x = -1.4, nudge_y = 20)+
        xlab("Betweenness log(10)")+ylab("Degree")+
        ggtitle("Lee Morgan's THE SIDEWINDER: Artist Network\nMost Connected Artists in Blue")

library(plotly)
ggplotly(g1)

  1. The following record labels are included in the database of jazz musician relationships: Argo/Cadet Records Atlantic Records Bethlehem Records Blue Note Records Candid Records Contemporary Records CTI Records Debut Records Dial Records ECM Records ESP-Disk’ Fantasy Records Impulse! Records Mercury Records Milestone Records Mosaic Records Pablo Records Pacific Jazz Records Prestige Records Riverside Records Savoy Records Verve Records↩